From an early age, Yadvender was fascinated with superheroes and his family encouraged his artistic interests in them by teaching him how to draw them. Then he pursued it in school, competing in school and national level competitions in which he would conquer them all.
“We live in the age of superhero movies,” he states, “Movies that are packed with CGI and visual effects. And in this digital age, what is a better way to follow the trend? I don’t know about others, but I’m a comic book fan. But when it comes to me making fan art, then I’m not really making them just to gain popularity or to follow a trend. I have a simple goal, to establish a good career for myself in the field of graphic design and digital art so that I can make a very good living in the future.”
On Josh Brolin
The 24 year-old has a creatively burgeoning Instagram account, @ultraraw26 , through which he shares stunningly vibrant artworks of the superhero realms, explaining, “When I make works, I don’t make them on a movie that I like. I make my works on the basis of an idea.” And it’s these works which have caught the eye of Josh Brolin, who plays Thanos in the Marvel films, recently who shared Yadvender’s work on his Instagram.
The artwork by Yadvender Singh that caught Josh Brolin’s eye
On May 25, Yadvender had gone to bed after a long day of perfecting the Infinity Wars -inspired artwork. He woke up the next morning, his birthday, to countless notifications to find Brolin had given him the proverbial thumbs up. “Other social media platforms like Artstation and Deviantart also help fan artists to showcase our work to all kinds of crowds. Plus, I have received many opportunities through all this. Every person loves superheroes — well, the majority does. So that is again a plus-point that fanart is becoming so popular on socials.”
Brolin isn’t the first of Hollywood to celebrate fan art. Ryan Reynolds has shared works by Dave Pollot on Deadpool , Robert Downey Jr has shared works by Mar Mai and Jimmy Rich for all things Iron Man , and Chadwick Boseman aka Black Panther has favourited pieces by Justin Copeland.
Yadvender Singh, a 24 year-old Delhi-based graphic designer
Eventually, Yadvender studied a Bachelor of Fine Arts, closely studying the human anatomy — muscles, bone structure and facial expressions. “I know the ins and outs of how to use colours, or how to manipulate light and shade in a composition. So when I started with graphic design — in other words, digitally — I had already learned the manual ways. Word of advice: if a person really wants to excel in art regardless of whichever field do they want to go to, then they should definitely know the basics, like sketching. Without sketching, you cannot do anything in art, manually or digitally... because sketching teaches you how to use lines to craft a shape or a form of an object. Most of the young artists, no offence, don’t really bother to do sketching at all. That is the main reason why manual art is not prevalent in India anymore because everyone is going towards digital media, thinking that they will be exempted from the essential basics of art. That is wrong. Even in graphic design, whatever character shape you make digitally, you need to know how to make it by hand first. Only then you can judge as if the proportions are right or not.”
Undying love for comics
‘When I make works for such new movies, I tend to think from the perspective of a designer who actually works in their studio,’ says Yadvender Having been a comic book fan for as long as he can remember, the Marvel and DC universes have especially fascinated Yadvender for their larger-than-life representations of living beings. “If you see logically, then both the companies are using almost the same concepts, but with different looks and names. Bruce Wayne is Tony Stark; billionaires who’ve lost their parents, work with high tech gadgets and are genius-level intellects. But the way the comic book artists have differentiated these characters by drawing them, that amazes me. You look at a page of a comic book and you can see these lines flowing on the page, making a pattern. And then you realise that this complex pattern is the shape of a superhero’s body. Artists like Alex Ross, Jim Lee and Michael Turner have always been an inspiration to me. Because at the end of the day, these superheroes are simple living beings who look like humans. Spiderman still looks like a kid, right? So how do you take the visuals of a 15 year-old, and draw it in a way that makes him larger than life? That’s what fascinates me about these comic book franchises. And that’s what I really try to incorporate in my work, digitally.”
However, the artist doesn’t restrict himself to just Marvel and DC, sometimes exploring ideas behind Dragonball and other universes.
After the release of the Aquaman trailer, here is Yadvender Singh’s rendition of Arthur Curry
Yadvender, who favours his Dell 5000 Inspiron and Pentab graphics tablet, considers Aquaman and Shazam! to be the collective dream of a child that has come true, accolading DC for their focus on individual characters by immersing them in the films. “I already had made works on both the characters because I am aware as to how they can be executed on the big screen,” he admits, “When I make works for such new movies, I tend to think from the perspective of a designer who actually works in their studio, that I was actually given the task to make posters for the movies. I don’t have to think out of the box, because the characters are really simple, yet their execution is complex as it has never been done before. So for me, to make posters on both movies was a challenge. Aquaman is related to the underwater flora and fauna. When I made the recent Aquaman poster, my mindset was to improve upon the already released official poster, which had a lot of mistakes. I recreated the poster to show a more realistic underwater scene in which Aquaman sits on his throne. I made some new elements like designing the throne with aquatic characters. I also made the movie suit of Aquaman to make him look more logical.” Yadvender adds that he studied underwater photography as well to make it look as real as possible, explaining, “It was pretty obvious that a little blue haze is always present underwater. That helped me in blending the scene even more.”
Sometimes it’s super simple. For Shazam! , he melded Shazam with Billy Batson, in their movie costumes. “A heroic pose and some yellow lightning and the poster is completed... It was a fun experience with challenges of its own.”
Perusing the talented graphic designer’s portfolio, you’ll agree that his works also encapsulate a lot of the emotional power these characters hold — be it grief, anger, triumph, elation or confusion — making them all the more relatable to us.
